The comments were made by Ruth Deech, Britain’s first higher education adjudicator.
Photograph: Sophia Evans/for the Observer

The Union of Jewish Students has dismissed a claim by Britain’s first higher education adjudicator, Ruth Deech, that some are avoiding certain universities due to rife antisemitism.

But, while the group said her claim did not reflect the experiences of many Jewish students, who were perfectly comfortable on campus, it also acknowledged that there had been a recent spate of high-profile antisemitic incidents.

“It is important to note the extremely worrying rise in antisemitism on UK university campuses, and we are grateful to Baroness Deech for drawing further attention to this,” said the union, which claims to represent 8,500 Jewish students at universities across the country.

But it said Deech’s comments that Jewish students were avoiding certain universities did not “fully portray the experiences of Jewish students”. Instead, the union said, they did a “disservice to the thousands who are able to freely express their Jewish identities in whichever way they choose”.

Deech, now a crossbench peer, was the UK’s first higher education adjudicator from 2004 until 2008. The post is the highest office dealing with student complaints. She made the comments in an interview with Friday’s Daily Telegraph. She said that hostility towards the Israeli government’s policies could go so far in some instances as to constitute antisemitism.

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“Amongst Jewish students, there is gradually a feeling that there are certain universities that you should avoid. Definitely SOAS, Manchester, I think, is now not so popular because of things that have happened there, Southampton, Exeter and so on,” she told the newspaper.

“Many universities are in receipt of or are chasing very large donations from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states and so on, and maybe they are frightened of offending them. I don’t know why they aren’t doing anything about it. It really is a bad situation.”

“The high-profile incidents in recent months have undeniably contributed to this. However, there is no university that we would discourage Jewish students to apply to on the basis of antisemitism,” the union said. “Each of the universities named in the article have active and open Jewish student populations.” The universities have denied the claims.